


Freshman Blues

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-14
Updated: 2010-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-12 20:25:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She plays along, smiling, finds herself listening and actually giving a damn, and reminds herself: you aren't really here. Do the job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freshman Blues

**Author's Note:**

> set during season 3. Written for my spn_30snapshots [table](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/242411.html#cutid1) to [this](http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n246/lennni/my%20icons/010a.jpg) prompt.

The scent of leather, sweet and rich, rises in the tiny room Jo has rented as she bends to lace her boots. She got them in a thrift store for five bucks, and loves how they're already broken in, the softness of the uppers, how thick the soles are, the scuffed toe. She could kick a vampire in the face with those boots and then walk for miles -- has walked for miles in them along the side of highways, thumb stuck up for a ride whenever her truck broke down, which was often. Wearing them makes her feel anchored, permanent.

Jo puts on a ratty knit sweater instead of a flannel shirt and ties her hair up into a bun, then looks at herself in the cracked full-length mirror. In her boots, jeans, and v-neck black shirt, she figures she passes for any ordinary college student. The outline of the knife strapped to her calf doesn't show much under the denim. There's holy water in the small silver flask tucked in her right pocket, and a ziploc bag of rock salt in her left.

She pulls the fake ID out of her back pocket and picks at the edges with a fingernail. The ID looks real good -- ought to, since she made it herself. In college towns it was always disgustingly easy to get a fake ID, but this would've been a first for the local provider: someone who wanted to appear younger than she really was, and make it look like the college's ID instead of a driver's license.

The room's ten blocks from the campus. Jo wears a brand-new backpack slung over one shoulder as she walks in through the front gates. Thick, old oaks going yellow with early autumn have dropped leaves all over the path, sun warming the top of her head. For a five minutes -- the length of the walk to the ivy-covered brick building where the class she's chosen to attend is located -- she almost believes in her own persona. Joanna Beth Harvelle, class of aught something. She goes up the steps with a few other students, following them through the doors, noticing a few of the kids glancing at her.

Yeah, Jo has tried college, she's seen the friendly curiosity turn to suspicion when her blade falls out of her bag, when she can't adequately explain the salt and herbs and silver, when her roommate grows more and more withdrawn after seeing the collection of knives Jo hid in her closet. College isn't for her, it's not her life.

She doesn't need it -- she's an ace at memorizing, she's a quick study, knows how to research, and on her own she can study the things most relevant to getting the job done, and skip the rest.

The professor starts a lecture on a long-dead poet while Jo slips her EMF out of her backpack beneath her desk. She's got it connected to a set of earbud headphones to hide the noise, puts one in her ear. Anyone will think she's goofing off, listening to her ipod during class -- someone like the skinny kid with dark curly hair seated across from her. He glances at her and rolls his eyes and she plays along, smirking back. He's cute, in an awkward sort of way.

There's nothing on the EMF, not in this room, not in any of the other classrooms. The copy of the news clipping she carries in the back pocket of her jeans has grown soft she's handled it so much, smudged with the oils on her fingers. It's a sidebar about a few recent accidents on campus that references the murder of a student in this room seventeen years ago. Two students were hospitalized this year, another badly frightened. When she hacked into the campus security incident logs, Jo found the same pattern going back a few years, always near or in this building.

It was only because the daughter of one of Mom's old friends saw something a few weeks ago that freaked her out that Jo's here, and found the pattern at all. The girl's parents thought their daughter was having a small nervous breakdown brought on by stress. "Freshman blues" was what they called it, what they would've called it with Jo if she bothered with campus counselors instead of shoving her stuff into a duffel bag and just going. She hadn't bothered with drop-out paperwork either.

She spends the day hanging in the student center, or going to random classes, because there's nothing else to do but wait. She sits in the library behind a stack of books, putting her boots up on the table as she reads, random stuff, marine biology, medieval architecture, Ovid. Jo keeps her ipod on so no one talks to her. Some try anyway and she plays along, smiling, finds herself listening and actually giving a damn, and reminds herself: you aren't really here. Do the job.

It's not that she wishes things were different, not really. But the line wavers, as if all she has to do is uncurl a finger to loose her grip and fall from one life into the other.

At midnight, after eating the cafeteria pizza and finding it bland, she goes back to the classroom, sits cross-legged on a desk with a sawed-off shotgun across her lap, and waits until the chill comes and her breath goes visible.

The boy's spirit flings her to the floor. She pulls herself to her feet and the ghost slams her hard against the blackboard. Heart racing, powdery scent of chalk dust in her nose, the taste of it caught in the back of her throat as the spirit blasts the room with wind, Jo gets her shotgun to her shoulder. When he materializes again, she gets a good look at him before she fires and he vanishes in a spray of rock salt. It's the kid from the photographs. His hair's short and spiky, the MTV logo on his t-shirt difficult to read in its transparency against the darkness, big headphones around his neck.

She gets out of there before the spirit can gather strength again, and before someone calls campus security about hearing a gun blast. Jo already knows where the guy was buried, a few states over. It'll be a long drive there and in the meantime the ghost could hurt someone else. She'll have to come right back to keep an eye on things and stake the room out for a few nights to be sure the salt and burn takes.

At the gates Jo stops, gun hidden in the bag, neck and back aching with bruised tiredness. She yawns and rolls her shoulders, the curves and loops of the wrought iron sheltering above her head.

Then she goes back to her room, gathers up her things, and drives fast towards dawn.


End file.
